Australian households experienced approximately 1.6 million incidents of malicious property damage according to figures released today by the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS).

The ABS Crime Victimisation Survey found that 912,500 households (11%) were victims of at least one incident of property damage in the 12 months prior to interview.

The Crime Victimisation Survey, conducted in 2008-09, asked people aged 15 and over whether they experienced a crime in the preceding 12 months for a selected range of personal and household offences (physical assault, threatened assault, robbery, break-in, attempted break-in, motor vehicle theft, theft from a motor vehicle, malicious property damage and other theft).Questions about sexual assault were asked of people aged 18 years and over.

More than half a million Australians (527,400 or 3%) aged 15 years and over were a victim of at least one physical assault in the 12 months preceding the survey. An estimated 321,300 men aged 15 years and over experienced at least one physical assault, compared to 206,100 women of the same age.

The ABS found that, for the most recent incident of physical assault, just over three-quarters (77%) of female victims knew the offender, and nearly half (49%) occurred in the home. In contrast, just over half (53%) of male victims knew the offender, and less than one in five males (17%) indicated they were physically assaulted in the home.

The survey also showed that 718,600 (4.2%) people aged 15 years and over had experienced a threatened assault.

Further information is available in Crime Victimisation, Australia, 2008-09 (cat. no. 4530.0).

Media Notes:

Due to differences in mode of data collection and survey questions, data from the 2008-09 survey are not directly comparable with data from previous ABSNational Crime and Safety Surveys.

When reporting ABS data, please attribute the Australian Bureau of Statistics (or ABS) as the source.

Unless otherwise noted, content on this website is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 2.5 Australia Licence together with any terms, conditions and exclusions as set out in the website Copyright notice. For permission to do anything beyond the scope of this licence and copyright terms contact us.